Design principles and structure elucidation of fullerene-grafted copolymers with high solubility and charge carrier mobility towards bulk heterojunction solar cells

Martin Hufnagel^a, Mukundan Thelakkat^a, Thomas Thurn-Albrecht^b, Matthias Fischer^b

^aApplied Functional Polymers, University of Bayreuth, Universitystr-30, Bayreuth, 95440, Germany

^bExperimental Polymer Physics, Martin-Luther-Universitaet Halle-Wittenberg, Von-Danckelmann-Platz 3, 06120 Halle, Germany

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Poster, Mukundan Thelakkat, 041
Publication date: 5th February 2015

We present tailored synthesis of fullerene-grafted polymers as acceptor materials and donor-acceptor block copolymers, P3HT-b-PPCBM, based on poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as donor and an acceptor block with pendant PCBM units. For this, we combine Kumada catalyst transfer polymerization (KCTP), controlled radical polymerization and click chemistry. The n-type acceptors phenyl-C₆₁-butyric methyl ester (PC₆₁BM) or its C₇₀ analogue PC₇₁BM are grafted via an efficient polymer-analogous esterification. We evaluate the impact of the polymer design, i.e. grafting density of the fullerenes, acceptor block length and composition of the block copolymers on the self-assembled morphology in bulk and thin films. Just recently we could demonstrate the formation of a periodic nanostructure both in bulk and thin films of a novel PC₇₁BM-functionalized block copolymer. The structural elucidation of the block copolymers is performed by various methods such as electron microscopy of thin films (SEM) and bulk samples (TEM), grazing-incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) and temperature-dependent small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). These materials are demonstrated as active materials in single component nanostructured bulk heterojunction solar cells.
(a) PC71BM-grafted donor-acceptor block copolymer exhibiting a nanostructure of 37 nm confirmed by (b) GISAXS and SEM in films and by (c) temperature-dependent SAXS in bulk.
[1] Hufnagel, M.; Muth, M.-A.; Brendel, J. C.; Thelakkat, M. Fullerene-grafted copolymers exhibiting high electron mobility without nanocrystal formation, Macromolecules 2014, 47, 2324-2332. [2] Hufnagel, M.; Fischer, M.; Thurn-Albrecht, T.; Thelakkat, M., Donor-acceptor block copolymers carrying pendant PC71BM fullerenes with ordered nanoscale morphology, Polymer Chemistry 2015,Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C4PY01357C.

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